 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
The Soon Coming Judgment Of God Upon America and How To Escape It 417
the prophet Daniel was shown that God’s truth would be “cast down to the ground.” God showed
Daniel that there would be four successive world empires. The fourth empire would evolve into a
terrible beast, which would uproot three kings (Daniel 7:7-8). This beast would make war with
the saints of God (Daniel 7:21); it would trample upon them (Daniel 8:10) and it would “cast
down the truth to the ground” (Daniel 8:12). At this time we will not explore who this beast was.
It is most important for us to consider what this beast tried to do and that was to destroy the true
word of God. This beast was not successful just as Jesus declared: “my words shall not pass
away.” But Satan shall try to extinguish the word of God again. God declares: “The thing that
hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there
is no new thing under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9).
Historically, Christians have believed that their would come a time when owning a Bible
would be a crime and that Christians would be martyred once again for the word of God. This
has occurred in the former Soviet Union, in China, in the Middle East, and else where but could
it be that Satan’s master plan is to corrupt the word of God rather than to attempt to seize
hundreds of millions of Bibles? During the dark ages Satan, through the little horn, “cast down
the truth to the ground” by both corrupting the word of God and by trying to destroy God true
uncorrupted word.
Many Were Martyred For the Word of God
During the dark ages Christians were martyred for their faith and for possessing the
uncorrupted word of God. They were called heretics. Few people possessed a Bible because it
had to be hand copied, a task requiring about 10-months of work. One group of people who had
the true word of God was the Waldensian Church, which originated in Northern Italy. “The
Reformers held that the Waldensian Church was formed about 120 A. D., from which date on,
they passed down from father to son the teachings they received from the apostles.”
1315
The Bible
of the Waldenses was the Italic, which was translated from the original Greek into Latin. Experts
date this version to have originated in 157 A.D. or earlier.
1316
The Apostle John died in 100 A.D.
The Waldenses were hunted down and martyred for hundreds of years; they fled from
country to country fleeing persecution. Their Bibles were burned. They had two great libraries
that housed manuscripts of the Bible, one Greek and the other Latin; both were burned along
with their contents. In 1655 there was a terrible massacre of the Waldenses. Jean Leger was a
leader, Apostle and historian of the Waldensian Church. After the massacre he set out to preserve
the Waldensian Bible. He collected as much Waldensian literature as he could find and entrusted
it to the protection of Sir Samuel Morland.
1317
Today there are approximately 200 ancient
versions of the Bible in existence. These versions were translated directly from copies of the
original Hebrew and Greek texts.
1318
A copy of the Waldenses Italic New Testament lies in the
Cambridge University library.
1319
The Waldenses still exist in Northern Italy and they still
possess the Italic Latin version of the Bible.
1320
A Corrupt Version of the Word
Not only did the little horn trample upon God’s elect and “cast down the truth to the
ground” but it also set about the task of corrupting the word of God. This was not a new tactic of
 |